


I Am Dead, My Dearest

by havocthecat



Category: Carmilla - J. Sheridan Le Fanu
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, Character Death, F/F, Femslash, First Person, POV Female Character, Post-Canon, Suicide, Vampires, Yuletide, Yuletide 2013
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-22
Updated: 2013-12-22
Packaged: 2018-01-05 12:22:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,429
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1093822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/havocthecat/pseuds/havocthecat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>...to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations--sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Am Dead, My Dearest

**Author's Note:**

  * For [tristesses](https://archiveofourown.org/users/tristesses/gifts).



> Thank you to MarsDragon for the betareading. Also posted [here on Dreamwidth](http://havocs-cry.dreamwidth.org/2014/06/10/i-am-dead-my-dearest.html).

The journal I had kept for many years had been an attempt, however unsuccessful it may have been, to exorcise the demons of my youth. I had never married, to my father's everlasting chagrin, but there had been no suitor who had caught my interest, and I had thought it fitting that the blood of the Karnsteins, which I carry in my veins through mamma's ancestry, died with me. I write this new entry too late to include in the bundle sent to Doctor Hesselius; perhaps it will be found and sent on some time in the future.

I know that her name is Mircalla, and that she is a Countess of the House of Karnstein. I will always think of her as Carmilla. It is a matter of stubbornness, perhaps. Father never called her anything but "that monster" after the summer.

She was a more than a dear friend to me, though I could not - dared not - tell my father that I loved her with the passion I ought to have reserved for one of my suitors. I had often thought that I should never tell him, and now I never will. He died last year, taken by an illness of the lungs after being caught outside in an unexpected rainstorm. 

Since that day, I have resided in our castle in Styria with only Madame Perrodon and Mademoiselle De Lafontaine for companionship. I continually urge Madame Perrodon to take a position in a home with small children, for they will flourish in her care. She would have none of it, for as my former governess, she was as determined to care for my children as I was to have none. Mademoiselle De Lafontaine, at least, would not hold to such ideas. I enjoyed her company, and she had been ever so attentive since that unfortunate time, as if to make up for Carmilla's attacks in some small way.

After some few years, my night terrors gave way to a sort of watchfulness. Without medication, even the slightest noise roused me from my slumber, as Carmilla was wont to have the lightest of steps and the most graceful manner of walking. After a half-dozen more years, even that watchfulness had subsided somewhat, though when it was an especially dark night, or if I had seen an ill omen, such as a black cat, I would never sleep through the night, but would wake in terror, short of breath and convinced that I was not alone.

It is of that wakefulness I write, in the pale, flickering light of an oil lamp, some nine years after I first met Carmilla. I started awake from a deep slumber, pouring out laudanum to chase away the memories of a dream, when I heard feet scuffing outside my bedroom door. Though I had often imagined it, that was the first night I had heard Carmilla's step and knew it to be real. She was waiting, trying to find a way to come to me, though I had locked the door and barred my windows since my last fateful night with her. 

I know not how I was aware of this, but as I have known Carmilla in one fashion or another since my childhood, I suppose there must be some sort of connection between us. It seems to me that, on those nights where - and I feel chilled merely writing about it - she came into my room and drank my blood, a transfer of some vital essences had occurred.

Despite the terror that struck at my breast and mingled horror with desire, I sat upright and fumbled to light the oil lamp I kept at my bedside table. When I turned the key in the lock and opened the door, there stood Carmilla, her eyes still dark and lustrous and undimmed by age. Her brown hair still tumbled down her back, and her complexion was, impossibly, yet more rich and brilliant than it had ever been on our previous acquaintance.

"Do you not wish to prey on me in my sleep instead?" I asked her. My voice trembled, but only a little, and I am pleased to say that my hand holding the lamp did not shake. "There is much I have learned about you, you see."

"Laura, my darling Laura," she said, and her voice was such rhapsody, her tone so sweet, that it struck me deep within my breast. She took a step toward me and faltered when I drew back. "I have always said that you should know all at last."

"I know much more about you and your kind than I had ever wished to know," I said, my voice calmer as I drew on the books I had read and all that I had learned in the past nine years. "Though nothing I have read has indicated that you would return to me once your grave had been exposed and your body burned."

I had read "Magia Posthuma," "Phlegon de Mirabilibus," "Augustinus de cura pro Mortuis," and even "Philosophicae et Christianae Cogitationes de Vampiris," by John Christofer Herenberg, which was a book not considered fit for ladies, not even in a backwater such as Styria. Our little library had expanded, books tumbling off shelves and a whole second room devoted to them as I sought to understand what had drawn Carmilla to me - and me to her. 

For, yes, I was drawn to her, not by charms nor enchantments, but by her charming manner and her pretty face, and by the closeness we had shared. Perhaps the reason no suitor had appealed to me was that no man had ever appealed to me, though I had often wished that several of the ladies my father had engaged for summer visits had been men, simply so I could have them as suitors instead of summer houseguests.

"I could not to take you with me, dearest, not then, not after those men tried to separate you from my companionship," said Carmilla, her eyes flashing with rage. She looked other than human then, a creature of shadow and a demoness. Something must have shown in my face, fear or distaste, for I watched her struggle to calm herself. After she did, she smiled her prettiest smile, the one that meant I should forgive her all her evasions. "You must have known I would return. All your books could not tell you that, but you must have known."

"Come inside and shut the door," I told her, turning away and going to sit on the side of my bed. I sipped at my sleeping draught. She would leave or she would not; I could not control what Carmilla could do. I never had much influence on her behavior. "Madame Perrodon sleeps lightly these days, and I half expect her to turn up at my doorstep asking if I am having nightmares again."

"Do you dream of me?" asked Carmilla. She sat at the edge of my bed, perched, not like a little canary or a sparrow, but like a hawk or a fierce lion, ready to pounce upon her prey.

"Have you dreamt of me?" I asked her. It took but a moment to come to a decision. To accept what I had dreamt of all these years. I drained my glass - I'd emptied the whole bottle into it - and reached out, brushing my fingertips along Carmilla's shoulder. I could not help myself. Her skin was as soft as I remembered it, and I was lost for a moment in memories of my mouth on her lips without knowing that her youth was an illusion and her innocence a lie. 

"Every night since your father parted us," said Carmilla, her voice fervent and her eyes burning, alight with some desire I could not - would not - understand. Or perhaps I feared to understand it. "Darling Laura, he would never understand that you have always belonged to me."

The room dimmed as the shadows lengthened, and my lantern faded to a faint glow. My eyelids were heavy, and the weight of my body grew with every passing second. I leaned against Carmilla, who put her arm around me, strong in a way I no longer found curious. 

"Sleep, sweet one," she told me, her voice a hushed whisper in my ears. "I will be with you until the dawn."

"No," I murmured. My thoughts were muzzy. I had something to tell her. I could not remember; it was not that she was not my darling Carmilla. "Wait." 

"Wait?" She sounded surprised. It was not what she had expected, I knew that, though I did not know what, exactly, she wanted. "I do not know what you mean, darling Laura."

It would be all right. I had decided. "Don't go."

I slid down, eased by Carmilla so that my head was resting in her lap. The room was dark and my thoughts were fading. When I fell asleep, the only thing left was the feel of her fingers stroking my brow and threading through my hair. It had been nine long years, long years of terror that I would not see her again, or that I would. I had not known until she was here with me which it was that I wanted.

I do not know what happened the next morning, nor the morning after that. I did not wake for three days. I had dreams of people weeping over me, Madame Perrodon falling backwards in a faint. I dreamt of the priest saying a funeral mass. I could not move, though the words were so repellent I wished to rise and flee, and the chrism of Last Rites burned my skin. Perhaps they were nightmares, fever-dreams, though I thought I felt Carmilla lying next to me, a solid presence as she wiped my skin clean and kissed my brow. 

"Patience," she whispered in my ears, though I was not certain how I could hear her voice through my slumber. "You need not endure much longer, my Laura."

When I rose, it was so very, very cold. I had no light to see by, no air to breathe, and no room to move. Though my muscles were not cramped and stiff, as I had expected, I did not know how best to escape.

There was a light and a sound, a scuffing of slippers that was familiar to me and, yet, so much louder than had it ever been before. 

"Patience," said Carmilla, but I had none, and reached up, pushing at the lid of the box I was in. 

"I am coming," I told her, sitting up. There was no light in the family crypt, and yet I could see. My sight had a sharpness to it that had not existed, and I could see every fold of Carmilla's gown. I could hear mice scuffing about outside, and I could smell-- Oh, I could smell life and death, my father rotting in the mausoleum, the dry dust of my mother's bones, and the blood of an animal caught in a snare some distance in the woods. It was exhilariating. 

"You are terribly vexing," she said, pouting as she the stone lid further to the side and letting me sit up. "I did not want to exert myself, and here you have made me. Why did you not simply turn to mist, dear one?"

"I do not know how to." It was not something I had thought of. Pushing a lid back should not have been difficult, I did not think. The moon was low in the sky and the sun had just fallen below the horizon. "It will take me time to learn, I think, but do you think you could strain yourself to move the lid every now and again. For me?"

Carmilla laughed, delighted, and held her hand out to me. I took it. Her skin was softer, unbelievably so, and she did not seem like she wished to let me go after I clambered out, so I held onto her. The stone floor was chilled against my slippers. I wore a simple white dress, and around my neck was clasped a strand of pearls that had belonged to my mother, with an emerald broach pinned to my dress. 

"I had come to kill you," said Carmilla. She was so close to me, with her brown hair tumbling in curls down her shoulder and wearing an innocent gown of pale pink. "You know that you were meant to be mine in every way. Your death belonged to me."

"Do you know that I spent nine years longing for you?" I asked her. I drew closer. "I was terrified that you would return, and yet, terrified that you would not."

The horror that had filled me was gone, leaving only longing and delicious anticipation. I noticed, not for the first time, the carmine hue of her lips. I leaned over and kissed her. There was a sharp pain in my breast, the very same pain that she had caused all those years ago. This time, though, I was struck to the very core with a terrible hunger. 

My teeth had grown sharp, enough so that, when I bit down on Carmilla's pale skin, it broke and blood welled to the surface. At just one taste of it, my hands spasmed and I dragged Carmilla down to the ground. She laughed, throwing her head back and pulling me atop her. "I am terribly thirsty, my dear, and my hunger grows. Surely you hunger as well?"

"What do I do?" I asked. Though I knew what I had become, I had not the slightest idea what to do next. I only knew that my mouth was parched and my one taste of Carmilla had not been enough. I knew, then, that it would never be enough, but so long as I remained with her, we would drink our fill throughout all the countryside, not just Styria, but wherever we roamed.

"Let me show you," whispered Carmilla, her grip steel and her strength bolstering mine. She slipped out from under me and helped me stand. "Let me take you home. We can gather your things and drink our fill from your funeral guests."

 

_"How does it begin, and how does it multiply itself? I will tell you. A person, more or less wicked, puts an end to himself. A suicide, under certain circumstances, becomes a vampire. That spectre visits living people in their slumbers; they die, and almost invariably, in the grave, develop into vampires."_


End file.
